


All my roads are red -Moriarty's playlist

by Moire (AlessNox)



Series: Moriarty's heart [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Backstory, Dancing, Disco, Gen, I love to watch you dance, Music, Season/Series 02, staying alive - Freeform, the BeeGees
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-10
Updated: 2015-05-10
Packaged: 2018-03-29 21:45:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3911779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlessNox/pseuds/Moire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>James Moriarty remembers his mother in the last hours of his life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is the work, of all of my works, that I think is most likely to be banned. Not because of all of the warnings that it has, but because it has song lyrics throughout. I almost didn't write it for that reason, and it may be taken down soon, so read it while you may.
> 
> I came with the concept earlier in the week, and then wrote it in a day and a night. The songs are meant to be played while you read it. I hope it was worth the angst it took to write. I have just made a podfic!  
> http://archiveofourown.org/works/10468707

All my Roads are Red

By Aless Nox

_https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMOzeJqR_gsgjEJopNTphh51HQ34fiF17_

He sat on the edge of the bed in his comfortable jeans, beige shirt, and jumper, an artful amount of stubble over his lip. It was a costume just like everything that he wore. The flat was small but clean. A place to hide away, a place to be himself, as he only was when he was truly alone. His phone beeped. He read the message and smiled. Sherlock had texted him. At last, it was time for the endgame, the final confrontation between them.

He had waited so long for this, the culmination of a game that had begun when he was still a boy. He hadn't known then that Sherlock Holmes would be the one to stand beside him at the end of it all. He had hoped for someone else to be there. Now all of his battles had been won and he was weary of the game. It was time to finish it.

It had been an absolute joy, this last revenge. To end a story that had begun back when she was still alive. It made him nostalgic. He rose from the bed and readied himself like a bridegroom, like a lover. His suit was freshly pressed, formal like wedding dress. He turned on the music, trying not to cut himself as he pulled the razor across his chin because he couldn't stop grinning. His hips and shoulders shook of their own volition. He couldn't help but dance.

 (http://youtu.be/c8E06mFGVu4)

_I've seen this story_

_I've read it over once or twice_

_I said that you say_

_A little bit of bad advice_

_I've been in trouble,_

_It's happened to me all my life._

_I lie and you lie_

_And who would get the sharpest knife_

_You know I shouldn't be somebody like that. I'm not the kind of man to throw his hat into the ring and go down without following through. The Day turns into night. Go down without following through. The Day turns into night._

_Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh._

_Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh._

_Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh._

_This is just where I came in._

_Hope rides on, but I'll go anywhere, yes I'll go anywhere with you._

_Time has gone, but I'll go anywhere, yes I'll go anywhere with you._

_This is the danger zone_

_This is where I came in_

_They know not what they do_

_Forgive them of their sins._

_They cannot take away_

_What you have given me._

_Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh._

_Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh._

_Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh._

_This is just where I came in._

Moriarty wiped his face, walked into the center of the room, and began to dance freely. He loved to dance, but these days he only did it in private. It didn't fit with his image of a cold-hearted killer. His mother had taught him how to dance. She had learned from watching shows on the telly, practicing in secret until she got up the courage to go to the disco herself.

It was 1978 and she was only fifteen but she could pass for seventeen in a tight blouse and blue jeans studded with rhinestones that she had spent hours putting on by hand the night before. She held out the money to pay, but they waved her through. It wasn't the last time. In later years they would pay her to dance. She was a stunning beauty with golden brown hair that fell to her thighs. It slid across her back as she danced mesmerizing all who saw her.

 (http://youtu.be/xFrGuyw1V8s)

_And when you get the chance, you are the dancing queen, young and sweet only seventeen._

_Dancing queen, feel the beat from the tambourine. Oh yeah._

 

_You can dance, You can Jive,_

_Having the time of your life. Ooo._

_See that girl, watch that scene,_

_Digging the dancing queen._

As a child, he would watch her dance around their living room. She would twirl in a circle and her hair would fan out like a cape. The smooth curves of her hips jerked up and down with the music. She was always on the beat.

She taught him to dance the hustle when he was only three years old. She had made a video tape of it, mounting the camera on a tripod so that she could dance beside him. When he was older, he would watch it over and over just to see her smile. She had smiled often when he was little, kissing him on the forehead and calling him her boogie baby. But the smile had vanished the time that they had tried to run away.

She had wakened him in the middle of the night, throwing his clothes into a suitcase that she had hidden under the bed. The car was parked down the road so that he wouldn't hear them leave. They had almost made it to the airport when he caught them. He grabbed her and threw her into the back seat blacking her eye with one heavy fist before telling him to climb up front. At home the beatings had continued. Loud, heavy blows that had pulled screams out of her mouth. He watched from the doorway as his father broke her arm with a chair leg. Afterward, she lay on the floor as if dead, her face emotionless, until he tired of the game and left the house.

James walked into the room and looked down at her face watching the blood run from her nose. She turned her head away and cried. He ran to his room and closed the door. Then he picked up his stuffed bear and beat it with his fists, tearing it with his teeth and ripping the fabric until the stuffing was spread all over the floor.

_(http://youtu.be/xFrGuyw1V8s)_

_It ought to be illegal_

_…_

_And we got nothing to be guilty of, our love, will climb any mountain._

_Near or far we are, and we never let it end._

_And we got nothing to be sorry for, our love, is one in a million._

_Eyes can see, that we, got a highway to the sky._

_Don't want to hear your goodbye._

_Don't want to hear your goodbye._

* * *

 

Moriarty walked out onto the roof of Barts Hospital to a bright, open sky. The roof was wide like a dance floor and he couldn't help strutting around in a circle before forcing himself to stand still. He didn't think that anyone was watching, but one could never tell. He went to the edge of the roof and looked down at the street below, carefully removing all emotion from his face before sitting down and typing on his phone the words….

"I'm waiting –JM"

On his eleventh birthday, his mother gave him a pair of roller skates. When she was younger, she had danced in them. She had married a man that she met in the disco and they had made a career of performing all over Europe. He had died, run down by a car while crossing the street, and she had married James Moriarty, from whom he had inherited his dark hair and his name.

James was rolling down the pavement, dancing to music when he was stopped by an arm on his shoulder.

"Hey, didn't you hear me?" The boy was blond and at least a head taller than him.

"What?" he said removing his headphones.

"You splashed my shoes with those skates."

"Oh, sorry."

"Sorry? Do you know how much these shoes cost me?"

Another boy came forward and touched the first boy's shoulder. "Carl, come on, we're going to be late for the meet."

"But this arsehole got mud on my trainers."

"I said, sorry."

"You think that's enough?" he pulled the Walkman off of James' belt and threw it on the ground stomping on it until the hatch broke. "See how that feels you twonk!"

"Hey," James said. "My mom gave that to me."

"Fuck your mom! And Fuck you! Besides nobody roller skates anymore, you faggot!" he knocked James to the ground then and walked away with his friend, laughing.

He showed the broken Walkman to his mother. She held him in her arms and sang to him.

(http://youtu.be/0vgwk8tUT5k)

_I know your eyes in the morning sun._

_I feel you touch me in the pouring rain._

_And the moment that you wander far from me,_

_I want to feel you in my arms again._

_And you come to me on a summer breeze._

_Keep me warm in your love then you softly leave._

_And it's me you need to show, how deep is your love._

He nestled up into his mother and sang with her

' _Cause we're living in a world of fools, breaking us down when they all should let us be._

_We belong to you and me…_

 

The door opened then and they rose from the bed as his father walked in. He had been drinking and he looked past James as if he wasn't there. Mother's face became blank. She whispered. "Go to your room," and he left.

He turned up the music, but it wasn't loud enough to hide the sound of the blows.

He remembered lying on the ground, Carl's laughter in his ears.

He had inherited his mother's lithe frame, and he wasn't likely to grow very much bigger, but he was clever. It would take time, but he would get his revenge in the end, on both of them.

***

The door swung open and Sherlock came out. He walked with a measured step that told James that he loved dancing too. It was in the way he moved, the way he walked. It was in the way that he solved crimes too, with precision and art. How alike they were. Both hiding their true selves from the world. Both loving the game, enjoying the dance. And oh, how he loved to watch Sherlock dance!

_(http://youtu.be/I_izvAbhExY)_

_Well you can tell by the way I use my walk._

_I'm a woman's man, no time to talk._

_Music loud and women warm,_

_I been kicked around since I was born_

_And now it's alright, it's okay_

_And you may look the other way,_

_But we can try to understand,_

_The New York Times effect of man._

_Whether you're a brother or whether you're a mother_

_You're staying alive, staying alive._

_Feel the city breakin' and everybody shakin'_

_Over staying alive, staying alive._

_I, ha, ha, I'm staying alive, staying alive_

_I, ha, ha, I'm staying alive_

 

"Well, here we are at last, you and me, Sherlock…" he said as the two of them began their slow dance on the roof. Moriarty had to fight to keep the disappointment on his face. It was exciting just to talk to Sherlock. They had been opponents, in a way, since childhood.

 

He had been surprised when he'd first heard that a boy of eight had been asking about Carl Power's death. He had even mentioned the missing shoes, but nothing had come of it. Who would have a motive to kill a child? Another child, the boy had said. Correct, but no one had listened to him.

James had forgotten his name until he saw it many years later in the newspaper. When he remembered, him he searched until he found his blog and realized that here was a man truly worthy to be his adversary. The fact that he had been the only one to suspect that Carl's death wasn't an accident was just icing on the cake. The more that James read about him, the more in love with Sherlock he became.

James Moriarty loved revenge. He loved it with a passion. He'd spent orgasmic hours planning exactly how to enact it, and having a chance to get revenge on Sherlock made him feel giddy. He would also get the chance to hurt Sherlock's brother as well, since he had tried to help him bring attention to Carl's death all those years ago.

Carl had insulted his mother, and he had killed him. But his mother continued to get more and more distant from him. One day, when he could no longer stand to watch her wasting away in bed, he put on one of her favorite records, and danced for her.

 ( _http://youtu.be/I_izvAbhExY)_

_My baby moves at midnight. Goes right on till the dawn._

_My woman takes me higher. My woman keeps me warm._

_What you doing on your back, Ah? What you doing on your back, Ahh?_

_You should be dancing, yeah. Dancing, yeah!_

His mother climbed up out of the bed and walked over to him. He reached out and she took his hand letting him twirl her across the floor. Then she danced with him. He was surprised to find that he was now tall enough to look into her eyes. He was almost fifteen now, and he imagined himself in that disco where she had first danced. He wanted to take her out to a club. To see what she would look like when everyone's eyes were upon her. When everyone could see how beautiful his mother was, not only him.

The record ended and he rushed to put on another, but she lay back down and wouldn't dance again. Less than a year later, he looked down at her body as she lay in her coffin. She was too young and yet she had aged too fast. He reached out to touch her hair, but his father glared at him then, so he walked over to stand beside him in the pew.

He heard them whispering about him in the rows behind. They called him a queer boy, so cold and heartless. No expression on his face, and not a tear shed at his own mother's funeral!

He didn't care what they said. He wouldn't perform for them. They had done nothing to help her while she was alive. They didn't deserve his consideration. Besides, he wouldn't show weakness with his father in the room. He waited until dark to go back to the graveyard, setting his mended tape deck on the ground as he fell to his knees to clutch at the dirt with his fingertips. He let the tears fall from his eyes as he played her one last song.

(http://youtu.be/UBgAj4cNee4)

_It's over and done, but the heartache lives on inside._

_And who is the one you're clinging to instead of me tonight?_

_And where are you now, now that I need you?_

_Tears on my pillow, wherever you go._

_I'll cry me a river that leads to your ocean._

_You'll never see me fall apart._

_In the words of a broken heart, it's just emotion that's taken me over._

_Caught up in sorrow, lost in my song.  
But if you don't come back, come home to me darling._

_You'll know that there'll be nobody left in this world to hold me tight._

_Nobody left in this world to kiss goodnight._

_Goodnight, goodnight, goodnight…Goodnight._

 


	2. Chapter 2

No, no, no, no, no, this is too easy, this is too easy. There is no key DUFFUS!! Those digits are meaningless, they're utterly meaningless. You don't really think that a couple of lines of computer code are going to crash the world around our ears. I'm disappointed, I'm disappointed in you, ordinary Sherlock."

…

"I knew you'd fall for it. That's your weakness, you always want everything to be clever. Now, shall we finish the game?"

 

He had put aside everything, after his mother's death. He left town and his father didn't bother to hunt him down because he didn't want him. He was fifteen, the same age that she had been when she went out into the world. It seemed auspicious to him. He went out in search of a new life in London town.

 

(http://youtu.be/CS9OO0S5w2k)

_Young man, there's no need to feel down._

_I said, young man, pick yourself off the ground._

_I said young man, cause you're new in a town. There's no need to be unhappy._

_Young man, there's a place you can go._

_I said, young man, when you're short on your dough._

_You can stay there, and I'm sure you will find._

_Many ways to have a good time._

 

He found cheap places to stay in London, but he didn't need cheap, he needed free, and they weren't to be found anywhere. He looked for a job, but no one wanted to hire a teenager, especially a small, surly one with an Irish accent. He went to clubs, but the dance scene was nothing like it had been in his mother's day, and no one would pay to watch him dance. But one day he walked into a gay bar and realized that some men were more than willing to be generous with a pretty young thing who could dance, especially if they thought they might be getting something afterward.

He tried it once with a fair-haired man, getting off in the back of a car just out of curiosity. It was passable, but nothing that he cared to repeat. The man, on the other hand, was quite taken with him. He let him crash in his flat whenever he wanted only asking for the occasional hand or blow job as payment.

Pretty soon he was going to every gay bar that he could find. He'd find some man who looked gullible and dance with him. When the man was good and drunk, they'd go out somewhere and he'd steal his wallet. He had to move around to avoid meeting the same men again, but it was working for him, and he made enough to buy fancy clothes and shoes which in turn netted him even richer men to fleece.

(http://youtu.be/xFrGuyw1V8s)

_You're a tease, you turn 'em on._

_Leave 'em burning and then you're gone._

_Looking out for another, any one would do._

_You're in the mood for a dance._

 

The man was big, with gold rings on his fingers and an expensive Swiss watch. James captured all eyes with his dancing and then walked over to stand at the bar. The bartender was used to him now, so when the man offered to pay for his drink, he shoved a club soda across and pocketed the change.

The man pulled a roll of notes out of his wallet, and James looked him up and down before pointing toward the back alley, but the man asked him to come to his flat instead. He had done it before. He'd made an artform out of climbing out of bathroom windows. The problem was that the man's flat had no windows in the bathroom. The only way out appeared to be the front door, and he'd have to pass the man to get there. He walked out of the bathroom and tried to make an excuse for why he had to leave.

The anger that crossed the man's face made him momentarily freeze, all emotion draining from him. That moment of hesitation cost him his chance to rush for the door. Before he knew it chubby fingers were unfastening his jeans and pulling down his pants. He struggled and fought but the man was too strong.

He had never actually done it before, so when the man thrust into him, he felt a pain like his insides were being torn open. He screamed and cried for him to stop, but the man kept on thrusting into him so hard that he felt as if his intestines would burst. He cried and gasped and tried to pull him off, but the brute's pushed him down into the couch so hard that he could hardly breathe.

When he was done, he pulled out and zipped up his pants. Then he threw a few pound notes on the floor and told him to come back again next week.

James curled in on himself rolling onto the floor. He reached down to touch himself lifting his hand to find blood spilling out of him. The pain was so intense that he couldn't cry. The shame was worse. He lay there for a long time disgusted with himself.

He wondered if anything like this had ever happened to his mother, but the thought angered him and he went cold. He took a breath, and then another. Then he stood up and walked into the kitchen to clean himself with a tea towel.

(http://youtu.be/haknxM7FGfk)

_In the streets of New York City, every man can feel the cold._

_And I don't want no pity, but I want my story told._

_And the lights shine down on me. They shine on the little boy._

_Is this the way to make him pay, being born in a world of joy?_

_But like me, he don't know where he'll go wrong._

_He won't cry so many tears till he finds out why he don't belong._

_Like me, there's no room for us out there. You can lose your hope and pride_

_When it comes to broken dreams, you'll get your share._

_Sometimes, a man breaks down, and the good things he is searching for are crushed into the ground._

_Get on up. Look around. Can't you feel the wind of change?_

_Get on up. Taste the air. Can't you see the wind of change?_

 

Standing in the kitchen, he noticed the carving knife in a wooden block. The man had fallen asleep on top of his bedsheets. When James left the flat, his shoes held in his hands, the white draperies were streaked with red, and the knife had been carefully cleaned and returned to the block.

He went back home then only to find that his father had sold the house and remarried. James asked him for a job. His father gave him one on the condition that he called himself Jim and never let his new wife know that they were related.

When she had her baby a few months later, she named him James Moriarty after his father. She never suspected that the man sitting behind the desk in his office was the boy's half-brother.

Sherlock knew that he was beaten. He asked for some time alone, and James granted it walking away.

He stood on the rooftop depressed that it was almost over. Soon, Sherlock would be dead, and there would be nothing left in this world to challenge him.

 

He had felt that way the day his father had died, as he stood watching the man's life bleed out all over the carpet in his new wife's house.

He hadn't done the deed directly. His father's second in command had shot him. But he had made it happen. It had taken hardly any work at all to get him to have an affair with his father's wife. It had taken even less effort to empty his father's gun so that when he stumbled upon them in bed, the other man got the first shot. The couple had fled the house leaving his father dying on the floor. He walked in then in a suit and tie watching his father's gasping breaths as he reached out to him for help.

"Help me, son. Get a doctor. I'm dying!"

"I know that you're dying," James said, " I've been waiting for it all these years. That's why I returned in the first place. To watch you die."

"But son…"

"You haven't called me your son for years now. But I am still your son, and despite your new marriage, I plan to take everything thing that was yours. What about your pretty young wife? Well, I think, given the circumstances, that she'll be too busy being in prison inherit your things. Your property will come to me, when they convict your wife of murder. Poor little James will go to a foster home."

"James, son…You can't let me die. I'm your father."

"Why can't I let you die? You killed my mother with your hatred and abuse. She found out what you had done, didn't she? She discovered that you had killed her first husband, ran him over with your car. She would have turned you in. That's why you threatened her. There was no love between you, only lust, and fear. Well fear me now, father. I will inherit both your legal business and your illegal businesses selling guns. They all know me now, and with your second gone, I will inherit it without a drop of blood spilling onto my hands.

With this, I can expand to larger markets. Spread the Moriarty empire throughout Great Britain, Ireland, and beyond. Well father, are you proud of me?"

He looked down at his father and smiled, but he got no answer, because his father was already dead.

Standing on the rooftop, waiting for Sherlock to jump was a great victory. He tried to savor it, but it was bittersweet.

 

(http://youtu.be/I_izvAbhExY)

_Life's goin' nowhere, somebody help me_

_Somebody help me, yeah._

_I'm stayin' alive._

_Life's goin' nowhere, somebody help me_

_Somebody help me, yeah._

Sherlock wasn't like him. He was on the side of the angels. No one could save James from the crushing boredom that his life had become. But then, Sherlock surprised him. He threatened him, and when James looked into his eyes, he saw promise of the fires of hell.

It was the look that he had got on his face when Carl Power's insulted his mother. The look he'd given when he tried to protect his mother, and his father had struck him down. The look that said that one way or another, there would be a reckoning.

 

For the first time in his life, James looked into another's eyes, and saw himself. He smiled.

"Thank You. Bless you. As long as I'm alive you can save your friends. You've got a way out."

He wrapped his hand around the handle of the gun.

"Well good luck with that," he said swinging the gun up into his mouth and pulling the trigger. Would no one ever remember that he was left handed? Guess not.

He fell to the ground and everything went blessedly dark.

It was over. Finally, finally, his dance was done.

 

 (http://youtu.be/JEl2hJnGeWY)

_I'm dead. My life's been sold. All my years are cold._

_No trees to hide my head. All my roads are red._

_And in the Easter I will see that same old sun that shone._

_And in the winter, I will stand in seas of snow, alone._

_I will wait for you, yeah._

_Your eyes will shine like new, yeah_

_I close my eyes and you're nowhere_

_And I'll wait for you for one million years._

_And I'll wait for you for one million years._

**Author's Note:**

> It seemed to me that when most people heard Moriarty had the BeeGees on his phone, they thought of it as a joke. I decided to take it seriously. What if disco music really meant something to Moriarty, then perhaps it could be a window into his soul.
> 
> Comments welcomed.  
> Songs:  
> YOUTUBE PLAYLIST  
> https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMOzeJqR_gsgjEJopNTphh51HQ34fiF17
> 
> This is where I came in by the Bee Gees
> 
> Dancing Queen by Abba
> 
> Guilty by the BeeGees
> 
> How deep is your love The BeeGees
> 
> Staying Alive the Bee Gees
> 
> Emotion The BeeGees
> 
> YMCA by the Village People
> 
> Dancing queen reprise by Abba
> 
> The winds of change by The BeeGees
> 
> Staying Alive Reprise by the BeeGees
> 
> One Million Years by the BeeGees

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[PODFIC] All my roads are red - Moriarty's Playlist](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10468707) by [Moire (AlessNox)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlessNox/pseuds/Moire)




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